Mr Wildey, a former RAF employee, was the only passenger aboard. He said: “I called mayday, mayday, mayday like you’re supposed to do but I forgot to give the registration or what it was.

“They came back to me and I gave them the details. I said I’ve got no flying experience, my pilot is not very well and he couldn’t control the aircraft.”

He described how he desperately tried to revive the pilot.

“I kept knocking him to get him to do something because I hadn’t a clue how to get down,” he told the BBC. “My mind was a jumble to be honest.”

Air traffic controllers asked Mr Wildey to head to Humberside Airport, north Lincs. He located the Humber Bridge and found his way from there.

“There was a bit of panicking because I couldn’t see the airfield properly,” he said. “But they guided me round.”

He circled the airfield as he tried to position himself for the landing runway.

“It was dark by that time,” he said. “And I couldn’t turn on the dashboard lights. It was a bit worrying because I didn’t know if the plane was level.

“They tried one circuit but I was way off. I might as well have been landing at Skegness rather than Humberside.” Despite his nerves, he finally touched down. “I’ve never flown a plane before and I know you bring back the controls.

“But I didn’t bring back hard enough so really I was just on a sort of nose down rather than anything else.

“Then we touched and it was a right bump … two or three bumps. It was a controlled crash really.”

Mr Wildey praised the flight instructors and emergency services for keeping him calm throughout the ordeal. “I was lucky they were talking to me on the radio all the time,” he said. “I fumbled along.”

Roy Murray, a flying instructor at the airfield helped Mr Wildey ground the plane safely. He said the pensioner had carried out a “beautiful landing” and praised him for remaining calm.

- The British pilots’ union warned of an increased risk of fatigue after European MPs voted to raise the hours airline staff work in 14 days from 95 to 110.